Catch phrases are for cartoon characters, not political leaders

Why the PM needs to trust the people with an honest assessment of our relationship with the United States

In her biography of Tanya Plibersek, journalist Margaret Simons quotes a source who has told her that Plibersek was in the “naughty corner” with party leader, Anthony Albanese. Simons puts this to Plibersek at one stage, and Plibersek responded angrily: “Oh, who cares? I mean, this is schoolyard stuff. That I didn’t get invited to someone’s birthday party or whatever. Who cares. Really!”¹

On Q&A on Monday night, I noticed the phrase came up again as the prime minister answered questions from the audience. “We’ve restored our position with the world as well,” he said. “We were pariahs, we were in the naughty corner in international forums like the Pacific, we’ve restored those relationships.”

It makes you wonder who Simons’ source was. Even if it wasn’t Albanese himself, it is clearly a phrase his colleagues associate with him. After she was forced from the party, Senator Fatima Payman, for instance, was quoted as saying, “He’s withholding those two additional staff from my office … maybe this is his way of punishing me, putting me in the naughty corner.”

Anthony Albanese often trots out these pre-prepared phrases either to make a point or to get him through a difficult moment. We are all aware of his propensity for pointing out that he was raised by single mum in public housing, though that has become less of a go-to response as the housing crisis has intensified and he and his partner invest in luxury seaside property.

He also likes to tell us how much everyone underestimates him, oblivious, apparently, to the fact that this is less of a flex than he seems to think.

Crikey pointed out this morning in reporting on Albanese’s appearance on Q&A that if “you’re wondering if he used his favourite line on inflation, you bet he did, stating: ‘Why do we deserve another term? Because when we came into government, inflation had six in front of it, now it's got a two in front of it. If you don't get the economy right, you don't get other things right.’”

However, the phrase that he (and other members of his Cabinet) have become particularly fond of of late is the one about Donald Trump. “I'm not going to give a running commentary on all of what Donald Trump says. That would take up a fair portion of the time.”

The line got a laugh when he used it last night and part of the reason it works is because it reflects a certain reality: that Trump spills opinions like Niagra Falls spills water after a thunderstorm, often with little attempt at consistency, let alone coherence, such that any “running commentary” is indeed pointless.

But there is also something cowardly about Albanese’s constant resort to this particular phrase.

Overall, the prime minister conducted himself well on Q&A on Monday night and made a decent case as to why he and his government deserve a second term. That case goes well beyond the obvious point that “he is not Peter Dutton”, and Labor should be careful not to rely on that negative argument to bolster their case. As has been shown with the changes to the Stage 3 tax cuts—which the PM was dragged kicking and screaming to enacting—and the recent announcement of more funding for Medicare, good policy is good politics, and he should really lean into that. In both instances, by playing on the front foot, he has led the conversation, leaving Peter Dutton sputtering and/or rushing to copy him.

But hearing Albanese’s response to questions about the alliance with the United States—the context in which he repeated the “running commentary” catchphrase—left me angry.

Asked if he thought the agreement was “rock solid”, the prime minister replied simply “yes”.

Are you fucking kidding me?

How can it be rock solid when the entire alliance is now dangerously vulnerable to the whims of someone who clearly has no commitment to the rule of law, to any sense of an international order, and has absolutely no fellow feeling for anyone, including little old us down here in the Pacific.

I mean, we have a free trade agreement with the US that negotiated tariff agreements on steel and how rock solid is that? Would a question about that elicit the same confident “yes” in response? If not, why would anyone think ANZUS is any less subject to the whims of the self-declared King of America than the FTA?

In fairness, the prime minister did suggest that some strategising was going on, even a little bit of independent thinking and assertion of values:

“We, of course, need to ensure that we look after our own security, that’s one of the things that we did with the defence force posture review,” he said. “The US is an important ally of Australia, but we need to make sure that our defence is up to scratch.”

…“Australia decides what our position on Ukraine is, and the Australian position is very clear, which is: we understand that the struggle of the Ukrainian people is about their national sovereignty, but it’s also about the international rule of law,” he said, citing Australia’s $1.5bn in financial support for Ukraine to date.

“If a big, powerful country can just go across borders, then the implications of that are global… We stand with the Ukrainian people.”

But we need something stronger than this, perhaps more in line with what the new German Chancellor said upon his recent election. "My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA," Merz said Sunday.

I get it. Albanese is playing the long, quiet diplomatic game, which is clearly the preferred modus operandi of this backroom dealer. But such an approach speaks to a particular arrogance of top-down policy making that refuses to take the people themselves into the government’s confidence.

I don’t think we can live in that sort of world anymore, and if the shift away from the major parties in our voting habits—along with the rise of locally engaged community independents—tells us anything, it is that voters are no longer comfortable allowing the major parties to set the agenda alone and in secret.

Make no mistake, this is an election issue. Maybe the election issue. Albanese said last night that “If you don’t get the economy right, you don’t get other things right.” Well, actually, if you don’t get national security right, there isn’t an economy to worry about.

Plibersek was exactly right implying there is something infantilising about any adult trotting out the “naughty corner” phrase ad infinitum. The PM should really get over cute. But the line about not conducting a running commentary on Trump is even worse in this regard, and it needs to be ditched.

Of course we don’t want a running commentary on every stupid thing that man says. But Trump is also presiding over a transformation of the United States into a form of fascist state, aligning himself with other authoritarian states, while openly breaking ties with (our) traditional allies. He is setting us against our region in way that remains dangerous and unpredictable.

A process is in motion, and it will come to resemble the sort of arbitrariness that characterised the monarchies of the past rather than the relative predictability and rule-bound processes of the functioning democracies that arose to take their place.

The world order, thanks to Trump’s transactional megalomania, is moving into a state that was first enunciated by German-Jewish lawyer and escapee from Nazi Germany, Earnst Fraenkel. His book, The Dual State, written in real time during the post-1933 rise to absolute power of Hitler’s regime, carefully documents the incremental changes to the law that led inevitably to authoritarianism. Fraenkel argues that as the rule of law subsided, there arose a two-track state….

…the ‘Prerogative State’ and the ‘Normative State,’ as we shall call them, which co-exist in National-Socialist Germany. By the Prerogative State we mean that governmental system which exercises unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees, and by the Normative State an administrative body endowed with elaborate powers for safeguarding the legal order as expressed in statutes, decisions of the courts, and activities of the administrative agencies.

…In studying the development of judicial practice as it is embodied in decisions, we learn that there is a constant friction between the traditional judicial bodies which represent the Normative State and the instruments of dictatorship, the agents of the Prerogative State.²

Trump’s Prerogative State is certainly coming to characterise world affairs, and it leaves a nation like Australia particularly vulnerable, requiring a more honest and open assessment from our political leaders. I include the crossbench in this demand, who will now have to rise above their own catchphrases about merely representing their electorates and instead assume the more mature position of governing for the entire country.

This is the price they pay for being part of a minority government. The role demands nothing less.

Still, there is a particular onus on the prime minister himself, if for no other reason than to help shape how others might respond.

Australia can no longer be all the way with the USA, and the party in power owes it to us to spell out where and how lines will be drawn. Under such circumstances, people are entitled to a more robust response than the fob of the “running commentary” line. To fall back on that is simply contemptuous. Stop saying it. We are entitled to know how our government is thinking about this massive change in circumstances and how we will align ourselves as the dual state sets in place and Trump’s fascist-adjacent behaviour becomes evermore obvious.

Catchphrases are for cartoon characters, not prime ministers.

---

1. Simons, Margaret. Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms (p. 117). Kindle Edition.

2. Fraenkel, Ernst; Meierhenrich, Jens. The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship.